"Often cast as the peacemaker in free software disputes, Bruce Perens is on the warpath. When we caught up with him, he wasn't in a mood to be charitable to Novell. On Friday the Utah company, which markets the SuSE Linux distribution, revealed that it was entering into a partnership with Microsoft. Redmond would pay Novell an undisclosed sum in return for Novell recognizing Microsoft's intellectual property claims. Novell received a 'Covenant' promising that it wouldn't be sued by Microsoft."It's a case of 'Damn the people who write the software'", he told us. "Novell is in a desperate position - it has a smaller share of the market than Debian,"" he told The Register. Update: Novell responds to community's questions: here, here and here. Update 2: Havoc Pennington's take.

NotParker:
perhaps we do hate microsoft, because they are the company in the world history, that has, and continue to develop the most unstable and insecure software.

and perhaps, because they are a company that actively spends millions of dollars every year trying to do everything they can to annoy us?

why do you think we hate microsoft? do you think its like: "hey! microsoft is a fair competitor, which simply has the largest market share, lets spite them for having a technically sound and very good product!!!!!!", perhaps you should think again.